Chris Taylor's Supreme Commander

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By Robert 'Apache' Howarth

In the August issue of PC Gamer they have a preview of Gas Powered Games' Supreme Commander which is designed by the man behind the Total Annihilation series. I haven't read the story yet myself (I just started on the July issue, go me) but Shacknews has a write up about their write up:

The big deal with SC is that there is a galactic war going on in real-time and as the Supreme Commander, you can seamlessly zoom in and out of different battles, shifting from a satellite to ground-level view. The action takes place on land, air, and sea with a large variety of units, including "major units" that are huge, hulking pieces of steel many times larger than the standard unit. Think a Godzilla-sized unit marching along with your tanks.

Overall, the article has you coming away with the sense that Taylor is trying to reinvigorate the genre. He feels RTS games don't feature strategy of any kind and he's here to fix that. For instance, you can use a "Base Commander" to handle all resource management while you're off actually dictating the outcomes of battles. On top of that, he wants to create a sense of realism and scale that has yet to be seen; the battleships in Supreme Commander are so enormous, you'd need a dual screen setup to see the whole thing at the ground level view. Supreme Commander is set to release in 2006.

Not that Dungeon Siege wasn't cool and all, but I'm happy to see Chris working on RTS games again.